One thing I have been doing for the LRF editions recently is make the title Table of Contents also a ToC entry just for the external ToC so if yuou use the external ToC, you can use it to just right to the full internal ToC.

I guess that could indeed count as an "external TOC", but I've never personally come across a MobiPocket book that didn't have a hyperlink to the TOC within the book itself - have you? I agree that one could create such a book, but why would you? Does every device which supports Mobi support Guide items? If not, and you did your TOC that way, you'd have no way to get to it.

I have seen such books. But I would argue that a link inside the book does not change the situation since it points to a new html document that is packed in the Mobi format. So the TOC is not inside the book.

From the viewpoint of the reader of the book, however, it really is pretty irrevelent which way one does it. I would argue that one should always have a way of getting to the TOC from within the book, but that's purely a personal opinion.

I think a lot of it depends on what you are using to encode your html source(s).

I still can't keep house without using Word to create the base html pages (with Word TOC functions on those, if necessary) for my book of books, then Conrad Sitemap Creator ( http://www.konradp.com/products/sitemap_creator/ )to create an external TOC to the individual pages.

So I have something that looks like this:

Directory of everything - Name of Book
....html1 - Conrad's Sitemap of everything here and below
....html2 - 2nd book
....html3 - 3rd book - with Word toc for this document only.
......SubDirectory of more stuff - 4th book
...........html4 - 4th book chapter 1
...........html5 - 4th book chapter 2
...........html6 - 4th book chapter 3
......Another SubDirectory of even more stuff - 5th book
...........html7 - 5th book chapter 1
...........html8 - 5th book chapter 2
...........html9 - 5th book chapter 3
......Yet Another SubDirectory with (Can You Believe it) even more stuff imaginable - 6th book
...........html10 - 6th book with lots of chapters all in one doc - With Word toc for this document only

This is sorta what the external toc made by conrad's SiteMap Creator looks like - The links are hot to the sub-folder/files. If there is a toc in those, those are also hot within those documents. If I've named/directoried everything correctly: The name of the sitemap = root directory = name of book collection.

Add the html files in Mobi Creator in the order they show up in the sitemap.

I link in the Conrad html file through the guide as a TOC in MobiPocket Creator. I ditch the built-in toc creator in Mobi - haven't been clever enough to get that to work with Word-built html.

If I have lots of books with lots of chapters, the sub-toc's in the individual files are hidden from the sitemap. Makes for a better abstraction layer for me to re-find my place when I push the wrong button and get lost.......

I think a lot of it depends on what you are using to encode your html source(s).

I still can't keep house without using Word to create the base html pages (with Word TOC functions on those, if necessary) for my book of books, then Conrad Sitemap Creator ( http://www.konradp.com/products/sitemap_creator/ )to create an external TOC to the individual pages.

So I have something that looks like this:

Directory of everything - Name of Book
....html1 - Conrad's Sitemap of everything here and below
....html2 - 2nd book
....html3 - 3rd book - with Word toc for this document only.
......SubDirectory of more stuff - 4th book
...........html4 - 4th book chapter 1
...........html5 - 4th book chapter 2
...........html6 - 4th book chapter 3
......Another SubDirectory of even more stuff - 5th book
...........html7 - 5th book chapter 1
...........html8 - 5th book chapter 2
...........html9 - 5th book chapter 3
......Yet Another SubDirectory with (Can You Believe it) even more stuff imaginable - 6th book
...........html10 - 6th book with lots of chapters all in one doc - With Word toc for this document only

This is sorta what the external toc made by conrad's SiteMap Creator looks like - The links are hot to the sub-folder/files. If there is a toc in those, those are also hot within those documents. If I've named/directoried everything correctly: The name of the sitemap = root directory = name of book collection.

Add the html files in Mobi Creator in the order they show up in the sitemap.

I link in the Conrad html file through the guide as a TOC in MobiPocket Creator. I ditch the built-in toc creator in Mobi - haven't been clever enough to get that to work with Word-built html.

If I have lots of books with lots of chapters, the sub-toc's in the individual files are hidden from the sitemap. Makes for a better abstraction layer for me to re-find my place when I push the wrong button and get lost.......

-bjc

Brewt,

Could you post a zip of just one simple novel (html and the toc as created by Sitemap Creator) as an example of what you're talking about?

I raided the .txt versions of the files from Project Gutenberg for James Joyce:
Chamber Music
Dubliners
Ulysses

I then ran them through GutenMark, which produced 2 versions of the files: a single-file, and a chapter-separated set of htmls. I did a minimal cleanup on the single html's - changed quotes to curly quotes, and added a Word-generated TOC.

Next, I built the SiteMap using SiteMap Creator. I cleaned up the sitemap a bit (for some reason, the links only really work after I've run them through Word - maybe I'm not doing something right), and assembled it all in Mobipocket Creator. (Raided and added a couple graphics from Wikipedia).

I raided the .txt versions of the files from Project Gutenberg for James Joyce:
Chamber Music
Dubliners
Ulysses

I then ran them through GutenMark, which produced 2 versions of the files: a single-file, and a chapter-separated set of htmls. I did a minimal cleanup on the single html's - changed quotes to curly quotes, and added a Word-generated TOC.

Next, I built the SiteMap using SiteMap Creator. I cleaned up the sitemap a bit (for some reason, the links only really work after I've run them through Word - maybe I'm not doing something right), and assembled it all in Mobipocket Creator. (Raided and added a couple graphics from Wikipedia).

Thank you for all your comments and suggestions. I've been away from my computer so haven't been reading the forum.

I wish I'd asked my questions before I did all the work to remove the internal, hand-coded TOC from the files I used to create the Kindle version. The TOC is extensive as the publication consists of 5 books and I had to recode to make the naming of the different TOC levels consistent across the books. (Those who have not worked on the Kindle may not know that you cannot automatically generate the Kindle TOC, it has to be done manually. This meant that I had to hand-code about 1,000+ a-ref's and a-names)

My assumption that the TOC for the Mobipocket book HAD to be external was wrong. After reading just one statement in Harry's tutorial made me realize that I could have used the internal TOC. A real DUH! Thank you Harry!

I have now used the Kindle HTML with its internal hand-coded TOC to create the Mobipocket ebook. This allows me to provide links to each of the five books' table of contents at the beginning of the internal TOC so readers do not have to page through pages and pages of the table of Contents to find the TOC for a particular book. And I have used the Guides to take readers directly to the beginning of each book. A Guide also points to the beginning of the internal TOC.

I hope this description helps someone who may be working on a similar publication. If I'd read something like this when I began my project it would have saved me weeks of unneccesary work.

(Those who have not worked on the Kindle may not know that you cannot automatically generate the Kindle TOC, it has to be done manually. This meant that I had to hand-code about 1,000+ a-ref's and a-names)

There are tools that will do it for you. I create all my books using "Book Designer", and that has an excellent tool for automatically generating a TOC from all the titles. Works great!